However, at the door in question, separating the facility’s inner core from access to the underground passages, Joe asked in a loud voice, “Why is this even available to people in this building?”
“Convenience, laziness, habit. You name it. The tunnels went in when the complex was built. They’ve ended up serving every purpose you can name, from supplying overflow office space to giving people a shortcut to the cafeteria in winter. Not to mention plumbing, electricity, the Internet, heating pipes, and whatever else. To a certain extent, I don’t think anyone’s ever thought about the security aspects.” He pushed open the unlocked door and ushered them through. “And I never heard of anyone ever escaping this way, either, until now.”
Joe understood that the power was out and the place trashed by recent events, but even so, he found what lay ahead to be dark and threatening, and could only imagine that someone whose paranoia or mental illness was already in high gear wouldn’t want to venture too far down these earthbound corridors.
Teater switched on the lamp attached to his hard hat, prompting them all to do likewise. The sudden darting of lights suggested a mixture of fanciful images: a mud-floored, buried passageway to some long-forgotten burial chamber; a battlefield-blasted building interior, redecorated with the detritus of a full-fledged firefight. The reality amounted to a dank, stagnant, gluey obstacle course, blocked by office furniture and the same stationer’s fodder they’d encountered in the lobby.
“This should be fun,” Lester said with false cheer. “Like a boot camp obstacle course for astronauts.”
Already, Teater was setting the pace, scrambling over the tangle with the ease of years of practice. Joe followed next, feeling clumsy and amateurish, aware of Lester and the utterly silent fourth member of their party standing patiently in line. It was during situations like this that Joe felt his age the most, and was reminded of the decades that he’d spent in this physically challenging job, at first as enthralled by the challenges as were his three younger colleagues right now. He rued the toll it had all taken on his body.
Still, as Teater had promised, it didn’t take long to get used to the awkward suit and forget its restrictions, in the face of simply trying to keep moving.
The piled barriers weren’t the only challenge. They had a double mission here: to find Carolyn Barber’s dead body, and if not that, any evidence that might tell of her fate. The first demanded the shifting of heavy objects and mucking through any slime deep enough to hide a body. The second called for an opposite set of skills-more delicate and interpretive, less disruptive. Here, Joe or Les would briefly stop one of the techs from tackling a desk or file cabinet, in order to quickly read the scene before them.
Like a single blue slipper, shaped for a small left foot, found about an hour into their expedition.
Joe held it up before Teater’s lamplight. “You’re familiar with the hospital’s workings,” he said. “This look like something the patients wear?”
“Sure does,” was the answer. “Standard issue.”
Joe reached into the kit he had slung over his shoulder and extracted an evidence bag into which he placed his discovery.
To their frustration, that single slipper marked their only success for another three hours, during which they covered about half the campus, often traveling down routes that either ended at sealed doors or simply dwindled in diameter to make further progress impossible. More than once, Joe made a point of thanking Teater for his guidance-without which he became convinced that he and Spinney would have gone missing as well.
Finally, mirroring the topography overhead, they began seeing signs of the ground ramping up and the water having leveled off, to the point where the damage became reduced to a thin sloshing underfoot.
It was there, at a Y-shaped juncture-with one shaft leading upstairs-that Lester made their second and final discovery. A single bare left footprint was clearly stamped in drying mud, matching the slipper in size, two steps above the high-water mark. Then, nothing.
“Didn’t Robinson Crusoe find something like this?” Lester asked, readying his camera. They worked together to light their finding properly, placing a ruler beside it as reference, before straightening and looking up the steps, as if anticipating the appearance of a celebrity.
“Where’s that lead to?” Joe asked.
“Out,” Teater said simply. “That’s the bad news, I’m afraid. Above us is one of the least occupied and most open buildings in the whole complex. Anyone can just come and go.”
They headed up, their eyes on the treads before them, hoping to catch another telltale sign, but Teater’s implication was well taken. Assuming that Barber’s feet had dried quickly upon leaving the water, and that she’d met no opposition from either locked door or human being, there remained nothing to pursue. When the four of them stepped into the fresh air, outside a door a few feet from the staircase’s apex, they found themselves in a huge, flat expanse-not far from Main Street-with unlimited access in any direction.
Kevin Teater removed his helmet and peeled off his mask before radioing their location to the command truck. He then rubbed his face with his open palm and raised his eyebrows at Joe. “What d’ya think?” he asked.
“I think it would be a stretch to say that footprint didn’t belong to Carolyn Barber,” Joe answered indirectly.
“Which brings us,” Lester suggested, “from Robinson Crusoe to Cinderella.”
“Or the Hunting of the Snark,” Teater suggested.
His three companions each gave him a blank look.
* * *
Willy Kunkle killed the engine and observed his home, located defensively at the top of a horseshoe-shaped street in West Brattleboro. His neighborhood hadn’t suffered from the flooding, being situated on a slope above the otherwise devastated Whetstone Brook valley. There had been at most a damp cellar on the block or an old tree toppled because of overly saturated soil. But Willy’s house had suffered nothing, in part because of his own preparedness.
And not in advance of just this storm. It wasn’t Willy’s style to yield to a single threat. To him, there was nothing but peril all around-and all the time-which was why his house had been chosen for its strategic location, why his property’s trees and shrubs allowed for clear sight lines down both streets, why he had two sump pumps in the basement and a backup generator, and why his locks and doors and windows were all high security-rated.
The coming of Irene had been no more for Willy Kunkle than a confirmation of his everyday fears, and his survival of her passing mere proof that you can never be too cautious or too prepared.
But it wasn’t the condition of the house that he was contemplating. His thoughts were on its occupants, as Sam had left the office early to relieve Louise from her babysitting.
Sam had been steady from the start of their union, seeing beyond his paranoia to identify the love he held for her and now their daughter. For him, predictably, that had only added to his worries. Sam gave so much with her forbearance, her patience, and her generosity. When was that going to run out? When was she, like everyone else in his life-including him-going to realize that he was a lost cause?
Willy watched his large right hand, resting on the bottom of the steering wheel-powerful, capable, a veritable weapon to so many who’d suffered from its strength. But what did it represent? A surrogate for its useless left companion perpetually stuffed into his pants pocket; a reminder that he was a cripple in fact and in function. The arm had been destroyed by a bullet years ago, taken in the line of duty, and despite the handicap, Willy-with Joe’s urging and to everyone’s amazement-had battled back to requalify as a fully certified police officer. He’d done as well over time combating alcoholism, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, a broken marriage, and the social isolation caused by a complete lack of diplomacy.